What is it that brings a sense of contentment, achievement, fulfillment, or gratification into our lives? Satisfaction rarely lasts long, but for the time we are blessed with it, it is a sweet reward for hard work, overcoming great strife or hardship. It’s difficult to manufacture, and impossible to fake. This honesty delivers a deep sense of peace or resolution. Satisfaction shares many qualities of love, sweetness, peace, power, and completeness, but it is different in that it is more subtle, and can be generated by oneself alone.

What does satisfaction feel like for you? In your own life what part has satisfaction played? Do you know how to reliably achieve it? When do you feel most satisfied? When do you feel the least? If you are dissatisfied, what do you do about it? Do you strive for satisfaction, or is there some other feeling that motivates you more? Are there different kinds of satisfaction you experience; material, spiritual, emotional, professional? Are they similar? Is there one kind that motivates you more than others? What would you like to do to achieve more satisfaction? What holds you back?

We all come from a specific place in the world. It is possible to adopt a new home, to find and claim a new land as “ours,” but there always remains some trace where we were young, an indelible mark. Where we come from becomes a subtle and deeply personal myth. This story will often color and frame our present more strongly than the actual events occurring in the moment.

For this meeting we will share our origins.

Where did you come from? What were the places that you grew up which shaped you? How was your life impacted by your exposure (or not) to nature, to people who were like you, and people who were not? What are your earliest memories of place? What was the light like, the temperature of the air? Were you happy or uncomfortable? Why does this memory stick? Does it have any special meaning?

How does your place of origin manifest in your life today? What have you kept? What have you rejected? How strong is your feeling of “home?” What do you consider your home, your sacred space? Where do you find peace and safety? Where do you not?

The topic will be what are the struggles or challenges you find yourself facing, and what has been your most recent triumph, and if possible how does this tie into your larger biography? The format will be to simply share a little about yourself, the theme may help provide some focus. If you want to share something else that’s perfectly fine as well.

Seeds for thought on the theme. These are not prescriptive, they can be entry points or ways of thinking about the topic, but there are many other ways to approach it, which may work better for you.

Is there a person or situation that is causing you stress or anxiety? What about this situation isn’t working for you?

Is your challenge totally new, or is it recurrent? What brings it on? What makes it better? What do you want to do about it?

What have you recently accomplished or overcome? What was the struggle? What makes the victory sweet?

What change needed to happen for you? How is this applicable for the rest of your life?

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who we are

This web site shows the content of a men's group in the Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda area across the Bay from San Francisco. It also provides information for men interested in creating their own men's group. While this site is no longer actively used by a particular men's group, it is being left publicly available as a means of facilitating the meeting of men.